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b0cb5b2
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A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster house, atop a tower, or under the wharves; a girl hotter always than noon in August; a girl who knew nothing; had thrown him so hard that he would be out of breath forever.
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Mark Helprin |
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f6d5103
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He could not have loved Virginia Gamely more, and he wondered if what he assumed lay at such great distance were present in this very city -or even in Virginia herself, if the future were to be fair and imaginative enough to take refuge in a single soul.
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Mark Helprin |
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1571a22
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Little men," he once said, "spend their days in pursuit of such things. I know from experience that at the moment of their deaths they see their lives shattered before them like glass. I've seen them die. They fall away as if they have been pushed, and the expressions on their faces are those of the most unbelieving surprise. Not so, the man who knows the virtues and lives by them. The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or n..
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Mark Helprin |
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873464b
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Critics can neither build nor explore. All they do, really, is say yes or no - and complicate it.
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Mark Helprin |
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7624dc1
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Souls are complicated things.
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Mark Helprin |
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f6eb035
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As he passed people rushing by the scores of thousands on the streets, he saw the glory of their faces. He saw in the way their eyes were set--in their reddened cheeks, and in their expressions of hope, determination, or anger--whatever it was that made them more than skeletons and flesh, for the life in their faces far transcended the material into which it had strayed. And yet if he were to grasp for it, all he would have would be the lap..
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Mark Helprin |
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2b8022c
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Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium.
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winter
freeze
weather
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Mark Helprin |
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5422729
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Her eyes showed that though she may have decided to regret him, as long as he was in her presence she could not.
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Mark Helprin |
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8059420
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They were already in love and both of them knew it, but for both it was too fast.
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Mark Helprin |
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b7e5632
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But in the end he was so tired and hungry that, rather than walk to Utah, he decided to take his chances in a moss-and-puffball suit on a shock pancake thrown into the air by a giant catapult. Besides, the thing was insanely alluring.
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Mark Helprin |
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357214c
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When finally the sky grew ink-black, the trees were visible only as their swaying branches blotted out the stars that crossed in blazing showers, as sometimes they do. The language of the stars, seldom read and heeded less, told beautifully and in silence of all the victories that had ever been won and all the defeats ever suffered. In uncountable lines of light across the widest sphere, the stars spoke of everything notable even down to a ..
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Mark Helprin |
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20e71b8
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How the holy and the profane mix in the light of day and at the end of life is sometimes the most beautiful thing in this world and a compassionate entry into the next. After failure and defeat, a concentration upon certain beauties, though forever lost and unretrievable, can lift the wounded past roundedness and the dying past dying, protecting them with an image, still and bright, that will ride with them on their long ride, never to fade..
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Mark Helprin |
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ba0cd01
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At least until there are new lakes in the clouds that open upon living cities as yet unknown, and perhaps forever, that is a question which you must answer within your own heart.
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winter
heart
life
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Mark Helprin |
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04d50e7
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Mrs. Gamely had gotten a letter through, inviting them to visit as soon as they could, and reporting that, in these years just before the millennium Lake of the Coheeries had had had hard winters--yes--but also extraordinary summers which had made the village overflow with natural wealth, "in the agrarian and lexicographical senses of the word. There is so much food, everywhere," her friend had written for her, "and so many new and wonderfu..
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Mark Helprin |
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7e72ae9
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He was able to find the intensity and beauty that he wanted, in the plung itself. Physical forces in a complicated coalition of gravity, acceleration, and temperature were powerful and intense enough to satisfy him. It made sense. Nothing was as comforting as the enduring purity of elemental forces, and returning to them could not mean defeat. But he never thought that he would die in a bark suit, strapped to a shock pancake, next to an inc..
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Mark Helprin |
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3401108
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Beverly had thought how strange and wonderful it would be if the earth were hurled far from its orbit, into the cold extremes of black space where the sun was a faint cool disc, not even a quarter-moon, and night was everlasting. Imagine the industry, she thought, as every tree, every piece of coal, and every scrap of wood were burned for heat and light. Though the sea would freeze, men would go out in the darkness and pierce it's glassy ic..
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Mark Helprin |
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5a19886
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He heard the Baymen tell of war, but they never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place.
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Mark Helprin |
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f6741f4
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and she speculated that the city would be cold, completely of itself, unconscious, that its every move would be transcendent, and that each of its hundred million flashing scenes would strike a moral lesson. Such a city would extend vision, intensify pity, telescope emotion, and float the heart the way the sea is gently buoyant with great ships. To do this it would have to be a cold instrument. And, despite its beauty, it would have to be ..
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Mark Helprin |
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3f81c79
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I made a boy's mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia.
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Mark Helprin |
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a5f2baf
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He thought only of one thing--the geometries before him. Here was God speaking in His simple absolute language, according to the same grammar that He had used to start the planets on their smooth and silken dance.
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Mark Helprin |
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4834ef0
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I don't know for sure," he said, "but I can't imagine that God, who is so adept at linking parents with children, would so cruelly separate them. Perhaps it isn't anywhere near the truth. Perhaps I'm merely self-serving. I don't know, but I believe against all odds in exactly what you say." "You don't care what anyone else thinks, do you?" "No, Papa. I never did." "That can only be because you believe." "Yes." "And how does God speak to you..
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Mark Helprin |
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04f7eb6
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No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding...
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Mark Helprin |
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4a25bcd
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the intellect is of no use unless it's disciplined by the mortification of the flesh, so that it may serve the soul.
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Mark Helprin |
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c32145b
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Never will anyone know you better than he who has known you when everything you have has been stripped away.
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Mark Helprin |
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94dd6d3
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For the first time, I had looked upon victory from the place of defeat, and because the victory was not my own, and I was apart from it, I felt it all the more. It was God's victory, the victory of the continuation of the world. It would bring me nothing, swell my fortunes not a bit. It was bitter, and I would always be outside, but never have I felt a deeper pleasure, never have I been more satisfied, for even if hardly anything was left o..
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Mark Helprin |
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1b4dcfd
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People in my constituency are starving and born with sixteen fingers. Did you ever eat weasel shish-kebob? Freddy doesn't walk by the side of the motorways to gather dandelions for his salad, but the people who sent me here do. Why are we supporting him? He doesn't deserve it. The Tories won't give milk to children who go to school hungry and come home to baked cat.
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Mark Helprin |
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3ca1232
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It was easy to argue with Quagliagliarello, if you had patience, and if you could pronounce his name.
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Mark Helprin |
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275d278
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He paused. Perhaps he had a son. He intoned their names, and then he said, "I sentence you to death. The sentence shall be carried out by firing squad, at the customary time, in the execution yard of this prison, one week from today." Then Fabio asked, "Why a week?" as coolly and with as much detachment as a customer in a bank wanting to know why his funds had not cleared. The court president did not object to this unceremonious interruptio..
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Mark Helprin |
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7308767
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If people love you for your soul, your face doesn't matter and you don't have to be perfect.
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Mark Helprin |
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06aa3ea
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And then one morning the soldiers grew suddenly still as the heavy latches were lifted and turned. Just before the doors slid apart, a man from Pisa took the opportunity to say, "The air is thin. We're in the mountains." Alessandro straightened his back and raised his head. The mountains, unpredictable in their power, were the heart of his recollection, and he knew that the Pisano was right. He had known it all along from the way the train ..
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Mark Helprin |
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c38a1a0
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One shouldn't ever do anything to protect one's dignity. You either have it or you don't.
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Mark Helprin |
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e49579c
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As they rolled over the marshes before Venice, he fell back in his seat, windburnt and exhausted, and noticed that the bottle of water, but for its slight and elegant blue tint, was the smoothest, clearest, and most transparent thing he had ever seen. All that was reflected in it was sharp, subdued, and calm. The fields outside, beyond the reeds; the reeds themselves, waving green and yellow; the water, shockingly blue in north light, were ..
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Mark Helprin |
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d75cba6
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They knew that to survive in Manhattan he would have to know something of bitterness before he arrived.
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Mark Helprin |
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fb17d80
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The quality of Venice that accomplishes what religion so often cannot is that Venice has made peace with the waters. It is not merely pleasant that the sea flows through, grasping the city like tendrils of vine, and, depending upon the light, making alleys and avenues of emerald and sapphire, Citi s a brave acceptance of dissolution and an unflinching settlement with death. Though in Venice you may sit in courtyards of stone, and your heels..
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venice
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Mark Helprin |
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76e7bfa
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Ezek nem kollenek. Csupa sar, semmi szin. Vagyis hat nem ilyen szinekhez vagyok en szokva. Mert vegyuk bar akarmelyik amerikai varost, osszel vagy telen, nezzuk meg egy tavoli dombtetorol, vagy csonakrol az obolbol vagy a folyorol: bizony hogy barmelyik reszletuk sokkal, de sokkal szebb festmeny, mint ez a lencsefozelek itten, amit maguk, tobbiek is csak ugy tudnak szeretni, hogy mindenfele pedigret aggatnak ra. Tolvaj vagyok, meglehet, de ..
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Mark Helprin |
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51bb91f
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Weeks and months are needed to accustom oneself to climbing. Otherwise, much energy is lost in clinging to the rock, maintaining too sure a hold, trying not to be too stiff, and worrying. After a while a climber warms to the mountains and can accomplish with little effort those things that once took all he had, for height gradually loses its meaning. Standing on the edge of a two-thousand-meter precipice becomes no less comfortable than sit..
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Mark Helprin |
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43649e2
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Recollection could be more powerful and more perilous than experience itself.
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remembering
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Mark Helprin |
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df67db3
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HERE AT THE GOLDEN GATE IS THE ETERNAL RAINBOW THAT HE CONCEIVED AND SET TO FORM. A PROMISE INDEED THAT THE RACE OF MAN SHALL ENDURE INTO THE AGES. Like
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Mark Helprin |
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4ab78a3
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A profession is like a great snake that wraps itself around you. Once you are enwrapped, you are in a slow fight for the rest of your life, and the lightness of youth leaves you.
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Mark Helprin |
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f8eff9a
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Lower [plane] than one of those who perished. It was their war, not mine. I was able to walk out of it, leave it behind. Though God preserved me, the best stories were theirs, and these were cut short. The real story of a war is no story at all - blackness, sadness, silence. The stories they tell of comradeship and valor are all to make up for what they lacked. When I was in the army I was always surrounded by thousands of men, and yet I wa..
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Mark Helprin |
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20a7590
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It was easy to be clever, but hard to look into the face of God, who is found not so much by cleverness as by stillness.
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stillness
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Mark Helprin |
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f9e16d3
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strength floods in after a fall.
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Mark Helprin |
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266ac15
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Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever.
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Mark Helprin |
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a1759ee
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Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.
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Mark Helprin |